Obama offers plan to curb high tuition

President Barack Obama announced a plan Friday that would pressure colleges and universities to rein in soaring tuition costs by making federal aid contingent on schools’ affordability and value to students.

“Higher education is not a luxury. It’s an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford,” Obama said at an event at the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. “It’s not just enough to increase student aid and you can imagine why. We can’t just keep on subsidizing skyrocketing tuition.”

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The president framed the issue as one of economic necessity, needed to preserve the engine of the American economy from tough foreign competition.

“We’ve got to have an economy in which every American has access to a world-class higher education,” Obama said.

It’s part of Obama’s election-year pitch to middle-class voters, who are worried about health care, job security, tuition bills and the housing market in an unsteady economy. Obama’s remarks in Michigan came at the end of a three-day, five-state tour to battleground states that focused on creating jobs, reducing energy dependence and making a college education more affordable — broadly populist themes aimed squarely at connecting with these voters. And today’s higher education announcement is specifically tailored to young people — a group that ferverently backed Obama in 2008 over his GOP rival.

Under the administration’s proposal, the formula used to disburse federal grant and work-study dollars would be changed to take affordability, low costs and value into consideration. The plan would also up federal campus aid from $2.7 billion to $10 billion, and create a $1 billion grant program modeled after the Race to the Top K12 grant competition that will help states develop strategies to contain costs and freeze tuition at public universities.

The president’s plan is aimed at reducing the crushing amount of debt students have to take on to complete their education and to stop the upward spiral of higher education tuition costs. The administration also hopes to increase educational opportunities for low-income students and families.